The first season of Halo’s TV adaptation was sometimes interesting, but also kind of a mess. With a new timeline to work with, the show took some sharp divergences, shall we say, and things ended in such a way you weren’t fully sure how we were going to make it to Halo: Combat Evolved.
In case you forgot how things ended, everything had largely broken bad for the humans: Halsey (Natasha McElhonne) escaped the UNSC and left Reach after trying to put the Spartans under her sole command, and Master Chief let Cortana (Jen Taylor) take control of his body in a fight against the Covenant. The finale ended in such a way that it implied we’d get Chief as his stoic self more in line with the games. But the fallout of that decision will have to wait, because it looks like the season’s big event will be none other than the Fall of Reach.
First released as a 2001 novel by Eric Nylund that served as Chief’s origin story, the titular catastrophe sees the Covenant touch down on one of the UNSC’s largest strongholds and lay waste to the planet. Bungie later adapted the Fall of Reach into the 2010 game Halo Reach, which led directly into the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. (It was also the studio’s last time touching the series before moving on to Destiny and letting 343 Industries take the reigns of the franchise.) It looks like the season will be taking similar ground as far as Reach’s end leading to the first game, but there’ll surely be some tweaks and additions that make things memorable in their own way.
Halo returns to Paramount+ with new episodes on February 8, 2024. If you feel the need to refresh your memory on what happened, Paramount’s put out the whole first season on YouTube for free, which you can watch here.
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